Marked - Revived
by MrsOzera
Summary: House of Night is one of my favorite book series of all time. But Zoey as a character does annoy me a lot of the time. I thought it would be cool to rewrite the book with some slight changes to her personality, her personal relationship with Heath and generally a lot of the writing.  NOTE: I will be using parts of the original text from the book but it will be heavily edited


**DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN HOUSE OF NIGHT. ALL RIGHTS GO TO P.C. & KRISTIN CAST**

 _ **Chapter One**_

Just when I thought my day couldn't get any worst, I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker. Kayla was walking alongside me, talking nonstop in her high-pitched babbling voice that she didn't even notice him. At first. Actually, now that I think about it, no one else noticed him until he spoke.

"No, but Zoey, I _swear to God_ that Heath didn't get that drunk after the game. You really shouldn't be too hard on him about it."

"Yeah," I replied absently. "You're probably right." Then I coughed again, feeling like crap. I must be coming down with what Mr. Wise, my more-than-slightly-insane AP biology teacher called The Teenage Plague.

If I died, would it get me out of my geometry test tomorrow? One could only hope. I sighed.

"Zoey, please. Are you even listening? I think he only had like four, maybe six beers. Maybe a couple of shots to go along with it. But that's beside the point. He probably would have laid off completely if your parents hadn't made you go home right after the game"

We shared a pained look, in total agreement about the latest injustice committed against me by my mom and my stepdad – who I dubbed the Step-Loser, a man she'd married three long years ago.

"Plus, he was celebrating. I mean, we beat Union!" Kayla shook my shoulder and put her face close to mine. "Your boyfriend is our quarterback so of course he's going to celebrate. It's been about a million years since Broken Arrow beat Union."

I stifled a smile and then turned my face so I wouldn't cough all over her.

"Sixteen." I replied when I turned back. I'm usually pretty crappy at math but Kayla's math impairment always makes me look like a genius.

"Again, _whatever._ The point is, he was happy. You should give your man a break." Kayla bumped shoulders with me as we kept walking.

"Kayla, you know I want to," I replied softly, "but the point is that Heath was wasted for the fifth time this week. His focus has changed from trying to play college football to trying to chug a six-pack beer without puking. I'm trying to take this seriously and I'm worried about him." When I saw Kayla that didn't react much, I added, "Plus he's going to get fat from all of that beer."

"Eww! Heath, _fat!_ Not a visual I want." Kayla scrunched up her face.

I rolled my eyes at the fact that _that_ was what she cared about. Kayla was an amazing best friend but sometimes even I wondered where her priorities lay. Her facial expression made me crack up though and I was just about to retort with a funny smart ass comment when –

That's when I saw him. The dead guy. Alright, so I realized quickly that he wasn't technically 'dead'. He was undead. Or simply un-human. It didn't matter though. Scientists said one thing, people said another, but the end result was the same. There was no mistaking what he was and even if I hadn't felt the power and darkness that radiated from him, there was no way I could miss his Mark. It was a sapphire-blue crescent moon on his forehead and the additional tattooing of entwining knot work that framed his equally blue eyes. He was a vampyre. Worse – he was a Tracker.

And best of all, he was standing by _my_ locker.

"Zoey?" Kayla asked tentatively. She looked back at me when I stopped walking and then finally noticed him, her eyes widening in shock.

Then the vampire spoke and his ceremonial voice slicked across the space between us, dangerous and seductive, like blood mixed with melted chocolate.

" _Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!"_

He lifted one long, pale finger and pointed at me. As my forehead exploded in pain Kayla opened her mouth and screamed.

When the bright spots finally cleared from my eyes I looked up to see Kayla's colorless face staring down at me.

As per usual, I said the first ridiculous thing that came to my mind. "Oh my gosh K, your eyes are popping out of your head."

"He Marked you. Oh Zoey! You have the outline of that _thing_ on your forehead!" She pressed a shaking hand against her pale lips, trying to hold back a sob.

I sat up and immediately coughed. I had a headache that was pounding against the inside of my head and I vigorously rubbed at the spot between my eyebrows. It stung as if a wasp had bit me and radiated pain down around my eyes and all the way across my cheekbones. I also felt utterly nauseous.

"Zoey!" Kayla was really crying now and she had to speak around wet little hiccups. "Oh. My. God. That guy was a Tracker – an actual vampire Tracker!"

"Kayla." I blinked hard, trying to clear the lingering pain from my head, "Please stop crying. You know I hate it when you cry." I reached out my arm to attempt to comfort her.

And she immediately cringed, moving away from me. I couldn't believe it. It was as if she was actually afraid of me. But that was impossible. Right?

She must have noticed the pain in my eyes since she immediately started talking again.

"What are you going to _do?_ You can't go to that place. You can't be one of those _things._ This can't be happening!"

I noticed that during her entire tirade she didn't once move closer to me. I pushed down the sick, hurt feeling inside of me that threatened to have me burst into tears. My eyes instantly dried. After all, I was good at hiding tears. I'd had three years of hard practice.

"It's okay. I'll figure this out. It's probably some…some mistake." I lied.

Still scrunching up my face at the pain in my head, I decided to stand up. I felt an intense wave of relief go through me when I noticed that we were the only ones in the math hall and then I had to choke back what I knew could only be hysterical laughter. Had I not been really worried about my geometry test scheduled tomorrow and had I not ran back to my locker to get my book so that at home I could attempt to study obsessively, the Tracker would have caught me outside the school building. Where the majority of the 1,300 Broken Arrow's South Intermediate High School kids would have been waiting for the school bus and would have seen _everything._

There was however still one other kid in the math hall – a tall thin boy with bad teeth which I could unfortunately see a lot of since he was standing gaping at me with his mouth wide open.

I coughed again and this time a really wet, disgusting sound came out with it. The boy made a squeaky little sound and scuttled down the hall, running away. It seemed that the chess club had changed its meeting time to Mondays after school.

Did vampyres play chess? Did they even do any sports? Or did they just sit around all night in a darkened room doing nothing? Or worse – sit around drinking… _blood?_

All these thoughts whirled around through my mind and I felt another hysterical bubble of laughter crawl itself out of my throat.

"Zoey? Are you okay?" Kayla's voice sounded too high, like someone was pinching her, and she'd taken another step away from me.

I sighed and felt a tiny stab of anger towards my best friend. It wasn't like I'd asked for this. In this one moment when I needed her most, needed her to hug me and tell me everything was all right, she silent and looked at me with an extremely pained expression.

"Kayla, it's still me. The same me I was two seconds ago and two hours ago and two days ago." I made a gesture towards my throbbing head. "This won't change who I am."

Kayla began tearing up again but was cut short by her cellphone ringing. Automatically, she glanced at the caller ID. I could tell by the guilty look on her face that it was her boyfriend, Jared.

"If you want," I said in a tired voice, "You should ride home with him." Her look of relief was like a slap in the face and I bit down my lip to keep myself from crying.

"Call me later?" She asked as she hastily retreated down the corridor and out the side door.

I watched as she rushed across the east lawn to the parking lot. I could see that she held her cellphone as closely as possible to her ear and was talking in animated little bursts to Jared. I silently wondered what she was telling him about me. Was she telling him that I was turning into a monster? I sighed heavily once more.

The problem, of course was that turning into a monster was the brighter of my two choices. Choice Number 1: I turn into a vampire which equals a monster in just about any humans' mind. Choice Number 2: My body rejects the Change and I die. Forever.

So the good news was that I wouldn't have to take the geometry test tomorrow. The bad news was that I'd have to move into the House of Night, a private boarding school in Tulsa's Midtown, known by everyone as the _Vampyre Finishing School_ , where I would spend the next four years going through bizarre and unnamable changes, as well as a total and permanent life shake-up. And that's only if the whole process didn't kill me.

And I of course, didn't want to do either of those options. I just wanted to attempt a normal life, despite the burden of my super conservative parents, my strange younger brother and my 'perfect' older sister. I wanted to pass geometry. I wanted to keep my grades up so that I could get accepted into the veterinary college at OSU and get out of Broken Arrow. I wanted to help Heath out of his drinking problems and stand by his side as he got his life back on track. I wanted to make it through our issues together because I knew that all he needed was someone to support him. But most of all, I wanted to fit in – at least at school. Home had become hopeless, so all I was left with were my friends and my life away from my family.

And now that was being taken away from me.

I rubbed my forehead and then messed with my hair until it semi-covered my eyes, and with any luck, the Mark that was now sitting above them. Keeping my head ducked down, I hurried toward the door that led to the student parking lot.

But I stopped short before I went outside. Through the side-by-side windows in the institutional-looking doors I could see Heath. My heart stopped in my chest. He was looking down at this phone, his blond hair flopping down over his face. My guess was that he was most likely texting his mom, trying to convince her to let him go out for the evening. Where he would probably attempt to get drunk and high again. Heath had never been this way until recently, when his grades had started going down and his friends had began to peer pressure him into participating in all kinds of sketchy activities. Sometimes I felt like the only things that were keeping him from doing something seriously bad were me and his parents. And his parents didn't enough know half of the truth. Me turning into a vampyre meant that I would have to leave my old life – leave _him_. Going out there, and having him see my Mark would most likely destroy him.

So instead of going to my car, I headed for the nearest restroom which thankfully was empty. On one wall were two sinks, over which hung two medium-sized mirrors. Across from the sinks, the opposite wall was covered with a huge mirror which had a small ledge for holding personal items. I put my purse and my geometry book on the ledge, took a deep breath, and in one motion lifted my head and brushed back my hair.

It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. That person you might see in a crowd and swear you knewfrom somewhere, but you really don't. Now she was me – that familiar stranger.

She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair – long and straight and almost as dark as my grandmas had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth – more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I'd always been olive-skinned, much darker than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn't that my skin was suddenly so white, maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead.

I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness…as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger…more barbaric.

And for a moment – just and instant – I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt the shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother's people rejoiced.


End file.
